Good news is hard to find these days with the Dubya in the White House, but it's not impossible.
From the Baltimore Sun this morning comes a small bit of good news.
More below the fold.
Jodi Kelber-Kaye was thrown out of a hospital room when her long-time partner was emerging from heart surgery.
Lisa Polyak was refused access as her partner received an anaesthetic before giving birth to their second child.
And John Lestitian was left to haggle with the estranged parents of his late partner over their son's death wishes.
All say they would have been helped by a bill up for a vote by the state Senate today that would create a registry of domestic partners and give unmarried couples such benefits as the right to make medical decisions for one another and visit each other in the hospital.
The Medical Decision Making Act of 2005 has grabbed extra attention in Annapolis given the dispute over Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose case has prompted a national debate over issues such as the role one person should play in another's medical care.
While the measure has been driven by the gay and lesbian rights community for the past two years, the bill applies to homosexual and heterosexual couples who consider themselves "life partners."
Of course, this doesn't give our friendly-neighborhood Compassionate Conservatives a warm and fuzzy feeling.
But opponents argue that it is nothing more than a tool to further the gay marriage movement, arguing that many of the rights are available through other avenues, such as wills and power of attorney.
"What the bill is really about is elevating same-sex relationships to the status of marriage," Maryland Catholic Conference Executive Director Richard Dowling said in a letter urging targeted senators to vote against the bill.
The Senate's vote today is crucial to the bill's fate. Last year, a similar bill passed the House of Delegates by a wide margin but died in a Senate committee. This year, a similar bill is expected to pass the House. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has yet to take a position on it.